The "Crud"

Wow. Yet again I have waited for what seems to be an eternity to write again. You know, I have always done this with all the journals I have had in my life. I have started with all of this excitement, envisioning how I was going to document my daily life, and how wonderful it would be for posterity, and then in the end I end up writing once every oh-so-often, and then it dwindles to nada. Well not this time! I am going to keep writing, even if it is for an audience of one – moi (sp?).

So anyway…what has been going on in my life. Well a whole lot of crud. Literally. All situated very comfortably in my lungs, in the form of bronchitis. So fun. Well let’s go back to the beginning. Two weeks ago Jamie was coming down with what seemed to be a bad cold – sore throat, heavy head, the works. Well that was on a Tuesday, and by that Thursday he was really starting to feel bad – which also happened to be the day that I was flying out after work to go visit mom and dad in Arizona. So as he dropped me off at he airport I kissed him goodbye, told him to take his vitamins, and figured that he would be fine despite some sniffling and sneezing. Well I was enjoying my visit with my family when I started to get a really bad sore throat – as-in painful - on Saturday afternoon. That was a big bummer because that was the night that my dad was cooking his famous steaks, at my insistence, and I had lost my appetite due to the sore throat. Well by that night I was feeling horrible. The next morning I woke up and felt like I had been run over by a Mac truck. I slumped out of bed, groggily said good-bye to my sister and nieces (who had come down to see me and were headed on their way back home to Flagstaff) and I parked myself on the couch. So since then I have been fighting what I now have found out to be bronchitis. It has me in a constant haze, and I have this horrendous cough, and my lungs are just full of – stuff. Anyway, besides that, things have been great!

Well to go more into detail about my visit with my parents, besides getting sick, it was really great. I hadn’t been back to Arizona in over a YEAR, the longest I have been away in my entire life. I really did miss just being in the State of AZ. So I arrived in Phoenix at 11:40 PM (after I’m sure I managed to infect not just one plane, but TWO planes full of people), where my parents picked me up. So we arrived in Casa Grande (where my parents live) at about 12:45am. We were all excited to see each other, so we stayed up a while, talking and eating tortillas in their kitchen. I would’ve normally said my “mom’s” kitchen, but I found out that since my dad has retired he has pretty much started taking over the kitchen, and I heard words that I never thought I would ever hear uttered from my mother’s mouth to my father: “Alberto, where’s the (insert kitchen tool)?” My jaw about hit the floor. So anyway, I guess it is now “their” kitchen.

So the next day we went to go visit my Nana, and I was admittedly VERY reluctant at first, because this was the first time that I had seen her since she had her stroke that left her partially paralyzed in November. So I was sort of dragging my feet that morning, sort of trying to delay the inevitable. So when we finally got to my nana’s house I was very nervous, and I could feel the adrenaline starting to pump and tingle in my stomach out to my fingers and toes in anticipation of seeing her for the first time. It was very odd to walk up to her front door and not have her waiting in the doorway with open arms. Pretty upsetting actually. So when we got inside I saw her sitting at her kitchen table, with her back towards the door, and instead of sitting in a chair, she was in a wheelchair. It was a bit unnerving, but I said “Hola nana” as normally as I would’ve any other time and walked myself over to her and gave her a big hug and a kiss. It was hard to see her struggle in feeding herself, and to see how weak she was, but it was really just nice to see her. It’s hard to imagine her making a full recovery, being a woman in her 80’s, but there is always the possibility…

That evening my sister arrived with my two nieces, who I had been dying to see. Amanda and Julianna have gotten so big, it’s amazing how much a kid can grow and change in six months. It’s hard not living close to them, but it was nice catching up, and just having them around. You know, it’s just great being around people who know you and really love you, which is something I really don’t have (and struggle with) being in a city that I didn’t grow up in, surrounded by people that haven’t known me for more than a couple of years, so in reality really don't know me. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t the person standing on the outside of the bubble looking in. Hopefully I will eventually feel like I fit in around here, but it’s honestly really hard to see how to break in.

So my trip to my parents house went really well. Hopefully the next time I go back will be less than a year away.

Well that’s about all for now. Until the next entry! (Your guess is as good as mine…)